


Shrike

by reysrose



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Familiars, Gunshot Wounds, Healers, Hunters, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Slow Burn, Witch Covens, Witches, inaccurate celtic mythology, mountain men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 20:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16145300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reysrose/pseuds/reysrose
Summary: Niylah does her best to stay out of the affairs that members of her coven concern themselves with. A healer and a peacemaker by nature, the politics of the local gangs and packs don’t draw her attention unless absolutely necessary.She’s pretty sure Octavia Blake, the sister of a high ranked lieutenant of a local pack, bleeding and half shifted on her back porch, counts as absolutely necessary.





	Shrike

There’s too much blood, slipping through her fingers, her claws still sharp and jagged where her trembling hands press against her naked belly. Octavia hunches over, her hair hanging down in her face, sticking to the sheen of cold sweat beading on her forehead. Shock. She’s going into shock. She’s on her back where she’d collapsed originally, and she drags herself to her feet with determination and pure spite, one hand still on her stomach, holding her wound closed. The air smells like gunpowder, like river water, like her own blood. She feels like she’s going to suffocate under the heaviness of it all. 

The bullet is still in there somewhere, lodged in her internal organs. She only knows this because she hadn’t felt it tear out her back before she’d blacked out from the immediate shock of being shot in the stomach. Octavia staggers forward a few yards, the trees and stars spinning in a sick kaleidoscope of black, blue, and silver. The pain strengthens and shoots into her limbs. She falls to her knees, slamming the right one against a rock hidden in the leaf litter. 

She has to get up. She has to get up, and get back to Indra’s, to her cozy little closet of a room and Clarke’s worried hands over the hole in her belly, the one that’s bleeding so much there’s already a puddle turning the hard packed dirt under the pine needles into mud. 

Octavia coughs, letting go of her stomach with the hand still on it to better steady herself against the ground, and then gags on the metal taste in her mouth. Blood runs down her chin and she spits it into the dirt in disgust. 

“Get up. Get up, asshole, get the fuck up, goddamnit, Octavia, get up.” 

She walks, curled forward against the blistering pain, until she falls, and then she crawls, feeling the shift take over to protect her human brain from feeling things, from feeling too much and giving up on her, feels the shift take over to keep her going. She has to keep going. It’s slow going as she lopes lopsidedly towards the edge of trees. She’s closer to Anya’s than Indra’s. She might actually be able to make it to Anya’s. She changes course. 

The back porch light is on, just like always, her own beacon in the night. She’s losing control of her shift again, on her hands and knees instead of four paws, claws and fangs still sharp against the flower beds and her lower lip. Judging by the quality of her vision, her eyes are still an icy blue instead of green, and her hearing is sharper than it should be. Somewhere two houses over, a cat meows loudly, probably for attention. Her ears ring with the shrill yowl, and she collapses to her stomach and begins to drag herself towards the porch steps. 

“Come on, Octavia, come on.” 

She is not going to die, naked as the day she was born and half wolfed out, in her sister in law’s tomato plants. She’s not. One, because it would be embarrassing. Two, because Anya would have Echo bring her back and then kill her again for ruining the garden. Three, because Octavia Blake really, really does not want to die. 

Indignation and desperation push her back up onto all fours and she climbs the steps like that, collapsing in on herself on the worn wood. She’s too exhausted, too weak, to drag herself any closer to the door so she just tilts her head back and lets out a thin, hollow howl. The neighbor’s dog chimes in, barking angrily. Octavia squeezes her eyes shut, pressing so hard on her belly her claws break the tender skin around her bullet wound. Her flesh is slippery with blood, and when she coughs and gags again the porch light reveals more of the stuff in her spit. 

“Anya,” She yelps, head lolling across the splinters and dry rot of the deck. 

Footsteps. She’s too out of it to tell if they’re actually Anya’s, but someone is coming for her. A howl bursts out of her throat, too weak to contain it. This one isn’t calling for someone. This howl is all pain. 

“Octavia?”

Niylah’s face swims above her, the older woman crouching, a thin hand hovering over Octavia’s torn up belly. Octavia snarls, snapping at her viciously, terrified and shaking. Niylah isn’t not Anya. She wants Anya. She trusts Anya. Where’s Anya? 

“Easy. Easy.”

She doesn’t know Niylah that well, enough to say hi if she sees her, but not enough to trust her to touch her when she’s bleeding out. She rakes at the witch’s face with her claws, drawing three deep lines of blood from Niylah’s throat and neck. Niylah swears angrily, grabbing at Octavia’s hand to keep her from doing it again. 

“I’m trying to help you, stupid girl! Fucking wolves-”

“Anya,” Octavia moans again, pleading, curling away from Niylah’s determined hands and in on herself to shield her exposed belly, “I want Anya.”

“She’s not here, Octavia.”

“No,” She screeches, because Niylah is hauling her up, swearing like a sailor at her for scratching her face, and dragging her over the threshold. Anya’s familiar, a silver grey cat, yowls at her loudly when Niylah shleps her to the couch, disturbing her perch on the left armrest. Octavia stretches out a trembling, blood soaked hand towards the animal, who pins her ears and hisses nervously, ready to attack. 

“M-Macha-” 

The cat yowls again, unpinning her ears and stretching a curious head towards Octavia’s finger. Her tail twitches, and before Niylah can shoo her away, Macha slides onto Octavia’s bare chest, curling into a ball and purring loudly, ears flat again with fear, little gray chin resting against Octavia’s guttering pulse point. 

“Octavia, what happened?”

She shrugs. She has no energy left, Macha is a warm weight on her chest, and she’s so cold, and so tired-

“Stay awake.” 

She growls, baring sharp teeth, her ears flickering back and forth. She’s more wolf than girl in her pain, and she can see the anxiety in Niylah’s sure, practiced movements as she tries to get at Octavia’s brutalized core. 

“Anya. I want Anya.”

“She’s not here, Octavia, and if we wait for her to get here you will die, do you understand?”

She does, but her predator brain just sees the woman trying to help her as a threat, a danger, no, no, no-

Niylah is murmuring something, a satchel of herbs in her hand, and then pressing something herby and hot into Octavia’s tender flesh. She screams, a human scream instead of a howl, and feels what little fight she had left after her ordeal leave her body like the dark blood pooling on Anya’s favorite canvas couch cover. 

“Better. Good girl. That’s it. Is the pain better?”

Now that she’s done screaming her throat raw, Octavia realizes that the pain is better, an ache instead of a blistering throb. She thinks she nods, jerky and stiff, head falling from the pillow towards her shoulder, eyeline meeting the fireplace. Macha purrs, her little pink tongue lapping at some of the blood staining Octavia’s chin. The cat is trying to soothe someone, whether it’s Octavia or herself, she doesn’t know. 

“Here, drink this.” 

Whatever it is, it tastes like honey, and she drinks it through the straw Niylah puts in her mouth. She’s so tired, almost too tired to swallow. So tired. She chokes a couple times, feeling warmth and magic take her from the inside out. Her head hurts, and her belly hurts, and when she moves a trembling hand to pet Macha, her fingernails are blue. 

“Anya…”

“She’s on her way. Lay still for me, alright?”

She’ll lay still. In fact, she doesn’t think she can move, her limbs trembling with cold and pain, dark spots dancing through her vision whenever she finds the strength to open her eyes. Colors are muted, and her hearing is patchy and weak. She feels sick, the honeyed liquid sloshing around in her wounded belly like it wants to come right back up and join her blood on the couch. She’s going to have to buy Anya a new cover. 

“Rest, Octavia. You’re safe now.”

She lets her eyes fall closed permanently, a new type of stinging pain radiating from the bullet wound on her stomach. Niylah is chanting in Latin, and she can smell bitter herbs and something sweet, lavender or rose petals. Macha purrs, one paw coming up to rest on Octavia’s cold clammy cheek. The cat flexes her sharp claws, the tiny points digging into Octavia’s cheekbone, protecting her. 

Octavia goes to sleep. 

~  
“The bullet was silver.”

Niylah is washing dark blood off her hands in their kitchen sink, likely getting gore on their dishes. The bullet rests in a plastic container by the spice rack, clean of any leftover viscera. Anya pinches the bridge of her nose, exhausted. In the spare bedroom, Octavia sleeps, Lincoln in a chair by the bed. Niylah had already removed the bullet and been in the process of repairing the extensive internal damage the girl had suffered when she and Lincoln had burst in the front door, frantic and terrified. O’s bandaged, salve on her stitched belly, her lost blood being replenished by a potion. Having a healer in a coven is useful, especially when you’re tied to a werewolf pack, even if said healer isn’t technically tied to the pack. 

Niylah has finished washing her hands and is handing Anya a steaming mug that smells like lavender and mint. Anya takes it thankfully, her head bobbing with fatigue. It’s definitely magic, because it has that specific scent all of Niylah’s potions have, freshly turned earth and roses. It’s definitely going to put her to sleep, which she’s ready for. It’s been a long night.

“Silver?”

“Yes. No wolfsbane, thank the goddess, but pure silver. It’s a miracle she even made it to the house.”

“Fuckin hell.” 

Silver means people that know werewolves, people that know they’re werewolves, people actively hunting the pack. Her youngest sister in law has been nearly killed, and they haven’t even caught wind of hunters in town. 

Niylah sits down, reaching for Anya’s hand and squeezing. There are faint pink lines on her face and neck from where a delirious Octavia had scratched her, already almost entirely healed. She makes a note to make Octavia apologize for that when she’s lucid. Niylah’s peregrine falcon, Dian cecht, swoops down from his perch on the refrigerator, nestling his beak in her blonde braids and snapping at a loose hair curling around her temple. 

“She’s going to be ok, right?”

Niylah nods, looking exhausted. It’s nearly 2 in the morning, the clock on the stove shimmering green in the dim light of the kitchen. Macha paces down the countertop and leaps into Anya’s lap. There’s a spot of blood on her paw, and she wipes it off, then takes a sip of her tea. It’s heavy with Niylah’s magic, sweet and soothing. 

“She’s strong.”

“I’m sorry about the claws and the teeth.” 

Niylah brushes a hand over Dianceht’s head, ruffling his downy feathers. 

“No worries. She was sick and scared and I wasn’t exactly patient.”

“She was dying on the back porch, Niy. I think you were in the right.” 

Anya sighs, looking over her shoulder towards the open door of the spare room. Octavia is on her back, ears still furry above the tangle of her dark hair. They’d cleaned her up and dressed her in one of Lincoln’s button up shirts to get at the wound better, and she looks like a little doll in the bed, pale and weak and broken. Anya swallows another mouthful of tea. 

“The bullet-”

“Not tonight, Anya.” 

“Niylah-”

The other woman covers Anya’s clenched fist with her hand and smooths it out, taking her empty mug from her and placing it in the sink. She knows there’s still blood in it somewhere, Octavia’s blood, swirling in the water collecting in the upturned cups. She looks towards the bed again. 

“Not tonight. Go rest. Be with them.” 

She stands, wavering a little, stumbling down the hallway towards the bedroom. Niylah’s magic is strong, and she’s falling asleep on her feet. 

“Easy there. She dose you?”

Anya nods against Lincoln’s chest, easing herself into his arms as he picks her up. She expects him to take her to their bed, make her sleep in their bed, but he lays her down next to Octavia’s sprawled form. Anya takes her hand sleepily, pressing a kiss to her scraped knuckles. Her claws and teeth have gone down, and she has human ears again. Lincoln takes his seat back in the old chair, leaning his head on his hands. 

Octavia whines in her sleep, like a puppy, and nestles closer to Anya unconsciously, a small hand lacing into Anya’s thin shirt.

Niylah is right, Anya decides, slipping off into sleep with the scent of blood and lavender and witch hazel in her nose. The bullet can wait until tomorrow.

~

Lincoln wakes up to his mother banging on his door.

He’s still in the armchair next to Octavia when the angry knocking starts, both her and Anya asleep with their foreheads pressed together and Octavia’s hand clutching Anya’s shirt. Her color is better, and she’s fully human under the blanket. He groans, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes and stumbling towards the door.

Niylah is already awake, taking the couch cover off the ancient floral monstrosity, Dian cecht perched on the top of the bookshelf and watching attentively. 

“It’s your mother.”

“Wh-how can you tell?”

Niylah rolls her eyes, folding the bloody canvas under her arm and heading towards the laundry room. Macha slides off the cat tower, padding over to him and demanding to be picked up. He places her on a shoulder, shuffling reluctantly towards the door. The knocking keeps going. 

“She’s got a specific aura.”

“Angry?”

“Uh huh.” 

Niylah disappears down the hallway just as he opens the door. His mother sweeps past him without a word, flanked by Bellamy, who claps him on the shoulder.

“Well?”

He figures he can play dumb for about five seconds before Indra sees right through him, but he tries it anyways.

“Well what?”

“Where’s my youngest?”

“How do you even know she’s here, mom?”

His mother snarls, eyes flashing amber. Bellamy’s head tilts back unconsciously, baring his throat, but Lincoln stares her down even as it makes his skin crawl. He refuses to back down to his mother’s rage. He knows not telling her immediately when her youngest pack member was gunned down was a mistake, but everything was just such a disaster, and nobody needed the extra stress of his Alpha mother breathing down their necks. 

“Niylah told Clarke, asking her to come check on Octavia this morning. Clarke told Lexa, and Lexa told me. Where is she?”

Lincoln jerks his head to the spare room, the one Anya is stumbling out of half asleep, and his mother wastes no time brushing past her and into the space. Lincoln pinches the bridge of his nose, wrapping an arm around Anya’s warm waist. 

~  
She hurts, all over, but her belly throbs viciously as she swims back to consciousness. She doesn’t remember where she is, but she remembers what happened, the bullet tearing through her skin, the report of a hunting rifle echoing through the trees. She whimpers, tossing to escape the pain. 

“Octavia, settle down.”

Indra’s voice sounds like it’s coming through a padded tunnel, but it’s definitely her. Octavia lets her head loll towards the sound, blinking tired, dry eyes. Her stomach hurts so badly she wants to be sick, but she knows that will make the gut wound worse. 

“Momma?”

Indra’s calloused hand smoothes her hair back, catching unpleasantly on the sticky sweat coating her skin. She’s cold, miserably freezing cold. She whimpers again, her throat catching on the sound. 

“Momma…”

“It’s alright, Octavia.”

She can’t remember the last time Indra sounded so soft and gentle, and it scares her. She must be really sick. Her belly stabs and throbs beneath Lincoln’s shirt. She groans in pain and wrenches away from Indra’s hands, gagging over the side of the bed. Watery puke splashes onto the old hardwood, and pain shoots through her middle. 

Indra’s hands drag her hair back from her face, cradling her cheeks as she gets sick onto the floor. She blinks, staring down at the mess she’s made, eyes going fuzzy from the pain and the pressure on her sore belly. Indra gathers her up, a limp little ragdoll, her head flopping onto her shoulder. 

“I need to know what happened.” 

She coughs, whining low, her canines sinking into her lips. They’re too sharp, too long, animal. Her shift is taking her, vision shifting to muted yellows and blues. Dogs aren’t colorblind, and neither are wolves. She told a teacher that once. Indra adjusts her in her lap, letting Octavia tuck her head into her chest. Her legs dangle over Indra’s thighs and the edge of the bed, just like when she was little. 

“I-I don’t know.”

She’s telling the truth. The bullet came out of nowhere, or at least nowhere she could see, and she was too preoccupied with getting the hell out of there than she was with looking for who shot her. The area has a lot of deer blinds, but it’s July, and it was too dark for hunters anyways

“You must remember something.”

She just shakes her head against Indra’s breasts, one hand drifting to protect her belly wound on instinct. Her claws are out. She feels awful, like she just wants to go to sleep, but she knows Indra won’t let her until she gives her something to work with. There’s not much. 

“The bullet was silver, Octavia. I need to know anything you can think of. Where were you in the woods?”

“The stream. Near the stream.” 

She remembers hearing the water rushing over the rocks as she fell, bullet lodged in her abdomen and the shock taking her under for seconds, maybe minutes. 

“Okay. Good girl.”

“Momma-”

“O!”

Her brother runs in, his worried face swimming in front of her fuzzy wolf vision. She reaches for him, desperate to feel his heart beat. Her pain is getting stronger, and Bellamy reaches out and smoothes a hand over her furry ears. 

“Hi, O, Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. You okay?” 

She nods, then winces and pulls a face. 

“H-hurts, Bell.” 

Her brother makes subtle eye contact with Indra, and then she’s being lifted into his arms, cradled against his broad chest. He’s warm, and she’s shivering. She’s really cold. Indra hands her brother a blanket and then she’s swaddled in it, being carried through the hallway and settled on the couch. Niylah is in an armchair, and she smiles at Octavia gently, standing up smooth and graceful and kneeling by the couch. Her brother is holding her hand, stroking the back of it with the pad of his thumb. 

“How’s the pain?”

Octavia can feel her cheeks heat up for unknown and decidedly ignorable reasons as she shrugs, whimpering when the motion of her shoulders tugs at Niylah’s careful stitches. 

“So, bad, and you’re trying to be stoic?”

“Y-yeah.” 

“Alright. Give me a couple minutes and we’ll get something to help with that. Clarke’s gonna come over, check you out with real medical skills instead of magic.” 

“M-magic isn’t e-enough, huh?”

Niylah gives her another smile. 

She likes the way it makes her feel. 

~

Clarke isn’t prepared to see Octavia not moving at all. She’s always doing something, picking at her nails, jiggling a leg, brushing hair out of her face, but she’s just laying there. It’s sobering, Clarke thinks, seeing Octavia drained and sick. 

“Hey, O.”

Octavia is on her side with a pillow between her legs for extra support of her core, South Park on Anya’s TV and Niylah sitting in the armchair. She’s bleary, barely conscious, but her nose scrunches up when she sees Clarke and there are no teeth, claws, or furry ears visible. Clarke drops a kiss onto her face, breathing in the scent of new shampoo in Octavia’s hair. Octavia whines a little, pupils wide and body limp. Her arm flops over the side of the couch aimlessly. Clarke begins to pet Octavia’s hair, turning to Niylah for a side hug made awkward by the angle. 

“Where’s everyone else?”

Niylah sends a soft smile towards Octavia, whose eyes are drooping shut under Clarke’s ministrations, then turns back to Clarke, Diancecht asleep with his head hiding under her braid. 

“Lincoln and Anya are napping, and Indra and Bellamy had to go back to the ranch to do what they missed doing this morning. I said I’d sit with her- I think I got the most sleep out of everyone in the house. She’s been in quite a lot of pain, but we’ve got that fixed right now, haven’t we?”

Octavia sighs long and hard, butting her head against Clarke’s hand to remind her to keep stroking her silky hair. Clarke snickers. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m playing with it.” 

They wait until Octavia falls asleep before Clarke looks at the wound. It’s nasty, bruised heavily around the site of impact and red and angry near the stitches, but it doesn’t look infected, and Clarke has more optimism about Niylah’s magic than most doctors in terms of internal injuries. She changes the bandages and writes a prescription for antibiotics.

“Your pain relief is better than narcotics, so I won’t worry about that. Have Anya or Lincoln fill this when they wake up.”

They sit and talk for a little while. Clarke has missed Niylah, her stubborn neutrality in terms of all things pack related cutting into their time as friends. She loves Lexa and she loves the pack, but it’s nice to be able to talk to someone not wolf affiliated or an actual wolf. 

Octavia worms her head into Clarke’s lap, dead to the world. Clarke knows there’s a storm coming, if Octavia has been shot, but right now it’s nice and calm and quiet in their little corner of the world.  
~

 

“The stream?” 

His alpha nods heavily, looking over her shoulder into the living room at his little sister, broken on the couch. Niylah is sitting with her, the only person in the house without official pack ties, though Bellamy doubts she’ll remain unaffiliated for long. Anya nudges him, gets him to focus. The familiars curl together on the top of the fridge, watching the proceedings.

“That’s what she said.” 

Bellamy fiddles with the edge of a napkin, looking at the plate of untouched sandwiches Anya had made. 

“That’s well within our territory, though. A little close to the northern border with Azgeda, but they wouldn’t have silver bullets,” Bellamy grinds out. 

“They wouldn’t. Because it’s hunters, dumbass.”

Bellamy bares his teeth at Anya, who remains as composed as ever. If he couldn’t see traces of Octavia’s blood under her nails where she’d held her together as Niylah stitched, he could pretend it was just another stupid argument they were having about what to do after pack dinner. 

“There aren’t any people in this town that would be stupid enough to hunt us, Ahn,” Lincoln mutters, “not anymore, not under the current leadership. And we haven’t had any new people move in recently. The last change in ownership of a house was two years ago, and there’s no new people coming in or out.”

“So we’re looking for someone transient, then. I’m telling you, it has to be hunters. Hunters that knew about us in advance because it wasn’t the full moon, and they still caught Octavia unawares.” 

Indra flashes a set of bloody eyes, her teeth bared. It’s the signal for them all to shut the fuck up, and by some miracle Anya does. 

“Hunters, in my town. Human scum.” 

Indra slams her hands on the table, standing up and showing her fangs. Bellamy feels his head tilt back, watches Lincoln lower his head on instinct. Anya is unaffected but looks away as a sign of respect. 

“I’ll tell Kane. I’m assuming he hasn’t heard about any hunter activity because he hasn’t told me, and that man is nothing if not loyal. Lincoln, the police force. Check records of recent gun registration, crimes, anything you can think of and get your hands on. Bellamy, go with him. Anya, call Lexa. She should be at the house, as should the rest of the pack, because I told them to head over when they were ready for the day. We’re on high alert. That means everyone stays at the ranch until we find who did this, including you, Niylah.” 

Niylah startles at her name but nods sharply before turning back to Octavia, who’s walking the line between awake and unconscious. The other woman is involved now, whether she wants to be or not. Saving Octavia’s life has drawn her into the life she wants nothing to do with, and Bellamy’s stomach lurches for her and her loss of freedom and willful ignorance. His alpha storms towards the door, furious, a storm with fangs and claws. Indra pauses, pressing a kiss to Octavia’s pale forehead as O blinks tired eyes up at her. 

“And, boys? If you see anyone who looks dangerous?”

Indra grins, showing her teeth. Octavia’s eyes widen in concern as she realizes she missed something important. 

“Extreme prejudice.”


End file.
